So Mr. Bent carried home, one day, a boxful of old papers, and spent several happy evenings going over them. The gem of the collection was a little bundle of letters, written to an intimate friend during the early years of the doctor’s headmastership, and so outspoken in their comments on persons and events that, apparently, the biographer had been afraid to use them. Such phrases as “I am determined, God willing, to lift this school out of the mire into which it has fallen.... The unruly spirit of the boys troubles me less than the prejudice of the masters.... Alexander the coppersmith” (probably an allusion to the Rev. John Alexander, at that time second master at Chiltern) “does me much harm.... I apprehend more and more clearly that a headmaster must be a despot.... The moral and intellectual deadness of these people to the larger issues of education appals me”--delighted Mr. Bent and whetted his appetite for more. When he returned the papers at the end of the week, he observed: “There’s matter enough here to blow up Chiltern and half the county into the bargain. Some of the letters are splendid and quite new, but it would never do to publish them. People would say they were an impudent forgery. Lanchester was a much finer fellow than I realised, and intensely modern. By the way, I understood he had had difficulties, but I never knew that he had to begin by sacking a third of the school and two of the senior----” But a look on Mr. Flaggon’s face pulled him up abruptly. “That’s the worst of headmasters,” he said to himself afterwards. “The moment you begin to be natural with them, you tumble up against the official.” But Mr. Flaggon was not offended. He had merely remembered, suddenly and with a twinge of pain, the difficult problems that confronted him, and what sharp remedies he might be forced to employ before they were finally solved. CHAPTER XI MR. CHOWDLER WINS A BATTLE AND MEETS WITH A REBUFF When Term began again towards the end of January, Mr. Tipham and his many-coloured scarf were no longer a feature of Chiltern. He had transferred himself to Cambridge and tutorial work, feeling possibly that Cleopas College and the undergraduate were in closer touch with Nature than Chiltern and the public schoolboy. Anyhow he was gone, and his place had been taken by a young man of less pronounced views, who wore spectacles and listened deferentially to Mr. Chowdler.